How Pinteresting! $20,000 employee benefit for surrogacy

HRK News Bureau | Bengaluru | Thursday, 15 June 2017

From July 1, the company will provide a benefit of $20,000 to employees who opt for surrogacy and $5,000 to those who take the adoption route.

Recently, photo sharing platform Pinterest learnt that one of its employees was planning a surrogacy with his partner. The company also discovered the high cost associated with surrogacy. This triggered the thought and Pinterest rolled out a new employee benefit policy for all its employees.

From July 1, the company will provide a benefit of $20,000 to employees who opt for surrogacy. This money will cover the cost of travel, legal fees and any other related expenses.

In addition, the company has also announced a benefit of $5,000 for employees who take the adoption route. The company already provides parental and fertility benefits of $20,000 along with 16 weeks of parental leave.

Candice Morgan, head of inclusion & diversity, Pinterest, writes in an official blog, “Our people team often speaks with employees to learn more about how we should expand our benefits. This is how we also learnt about the surrogacy case of an employee.”

“We’re always working on building our culture around our mission of helping people discover and do what they love,” she adds.

“At Pinterest, diversity and inclusion are woven into the fabric of our culture. As our company grows, so do the needs of each employee, including those starting families,” she writes.

The company, which employs around 800 people, also organises an internal conference, Knit Con, where employees teach each other special skills over two days. It’s a laptop-free, meeting-free event that takes place over the course of two days in the Pinterest offices around the world (San Francisco, New York City, Chicago, London, Sao Paulo and Tokyo).

Employees show off and share what they’re most passionate about through hands-on workshops and classes – basically an analogue version of Pinterest.